Category Archives: Chicago

Watching a new musical on Broadway 50-plus years ago

Posted on August 5, 2024 | 4 comments

   

In April 1973, my husband (I’ll call him Marv) and I left our home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and headed for New York City.  Marv was a terrific math professor at the University of Michigan, and he’d already earned tenure there.  Thanks to recognition by other mathematicians, he was invited to speak at a math conference to be held at NYC’s famed Biltmore Hotel, and I decided to tag along.

A bunch of my law-school classmates were living in NYC just then, and I contacted a few of them about getting together while Marv and I were in town.  One of my favorite classmates was my close friend Arlene, and she immediately made plans to see both of us one evening during our stay.

I was thrilled when Arlene surprised me with a terrific plan.  She was purchasing tickets for all three of us to see a hit musical playing on Broadway.  I’ve always been a huge fan of Broadway musicals, beginning when I was a kid, and I was excited at the prospect of seeing this one.  I may have heard something about it even before we got to NYC, but I didn’t know any details.  In the pre-internet era, it was hard to get details like that.

After a scrumptious dinner somewhere in Manhattan, the three of us set out for Broadway and the musical Arlene had chosen.  We excitedly took our seats in the balcony as the lights dimmed and a hush fell over the audience

As the curtain rose, I gasped. The musical was “Grease,” and it began at a 1950s class reunion at a Chicago public high school.  The graduation year, prominently displayed on the stage, was the same year that Marv and I had graduated from our own public high schools!  As we watched, our mouths agape, we soon figured out that the story focused on the “greasers” at the high school one of its writers attended.

The parallel with our own lives was undeniable.  No, we hadn’t attended schools where “greasers” dominated, but I clearly recalled the students my friends and I jokingly called “hoods”—short for “hoodlums.”  These kids were not terribly different from the working-class teenagers in “Grease.”  My school was dominated by middle-class kids, not the “hoods,” but we were all keenly aware of each other.

It turned out that the musical was first produced in Chicago in 1971, when Marv and I were living in California and totally unaware of local theater in Chicago.  It finally landed in NYC in 1972, about a year before we saw it, and it became the enduring hit we all know. Even better known: The 1978 film version that became a worldwide sensation.  “Grease” went on to earn both Broadway and movie fandom.

The music in the Broadway show we saw that night was astounding:  It borrowed the sounds of early rock-and-roll hits that Marv and I knew and loved.  It’s not surprising that many of the songs in “Grease” remain popular today. 

When the curtain finally came down, the three of us looked at each other.  We had all shared that era in the ‘50s just portrayed on the stage.  I was in a state of shock, trying to recover from the profound experience of reliving a slice of life from our high school days. 

You know what?  I don’t think I’ve ever completely recovered.

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Posted in 1950s, 1970s, American culture, Ann Arbor, Michigan, California, Chicago, class reunions, friends, friends, lifelong friends, New York City, rock and roll music, theater

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“A Raisin in the Sun”

Posted on April 24, 2024 | 1 comment

The enduring acclaim for the play “A Raisin in the Sun,” as well as its film version, has inspired me to relate what happened when I saw the play for the very first time. 

During 1959, this stunning new play about a Black family in Chicago, written by the exciting young playwright Lorraine Hansberry, premiered at an upscale downtown Chicago theater, the Blackstone Theatre.  Although histories of the play often state that it had its premiere on Broadway in New York City, it actually appeared earlier in Chicago.

The sometimes-caustic theater critic for the Chicago Tribune, Claudia Cassidy, wrote an enthusiastic review of it on February 11, 1959, noting that it was “a remarkable new play” that was “still in tryout.”

“Raisin” represented an enormous theatrical leap because of its plot– a realistic portrayal of a Black family in Chicago confronted with a crucial decision–and because of the brilliant performances by its actors, including Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee.

I was lucky to see “Raisin” during its pre-Broadway stay in Chicago.  As a Chicago public high-school student with limited funds, I saw it as an usher.

Ushering was a fairly casual affair in those days.  Often accompanied by a friend or two, I would simply show up at a theater about an hour before the curtain went up and ask the usher-captain whether she could use another usher.  The answer was invariably “yes,” and I would be assigned to a designated area in the theater where I would check tickets and seat ticket-holders. Ushering enabled me to see a great many plays and musicals at no cost whatsoever, and I ushered as often as my school’s schedule allowed.

I’ve never forgotten the startling incident that occurred during the matinee performance of “Raisin” I viewed as an usher.  In the midst of the performance, for no apparent reason, the actors suddenly stopped speaking.  The reason became clear when the theater manager strode onto the stage.  Bottling his rage, he explained that the actors had been struck by items thrown at the stage by patrons in the theater. 

I was shocked to learn of this extremely disrespectful behavior.  I’d never witnessed a problem of any kind created by audience members.

I concluded (fairly, in my opinion) that the audience must have included a number of boorish high-school students sitting in the balcony that afternoon thanks to “comp” tickets.  Some of them were undoubtedly displaying the bigoted attitude toward Black people that prevailed in their homes.

The Chicago area’s population at that time included large numbers of white people who were biased against Blacks.  Some of these whites felt threatened by any possibility of change in their communities.  Some later openly demonstrated to protest Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s visit to Chicago. 

Here, in an upscale downtown theater, was the ugly and ignorant result of this bias.

Has anything changed since 1959?  For a long time, I thought it had.  During my years as a public interest lawyer and, later, as a law school professor and writer, I worked toward and believed in meaningful progress in the area of civil rights.  I had hoped that this feeling by some white people that they were threatened by Blacks–and eventually by Browns as well—had decreased.

Sadly, our recent history has revealed that this feeling still exists. It’s even been encouraged by certain “leaders’ in the political arena.  Some predict that violence could be the ultimate outcome.

I worry that we’re edging toward a return to the ethos of 1959 and the hostility displayed during the performance of “A Raisin in the Sun” I saw back then.  I fervently hope that this will not, indeed cannot, happen and that most Americans vehemently reject the prospect that it will.

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Posted in 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, American culture, American history, Chicago, family, films, high school, legal assistance to the poor, respect, theater, Uncategorized

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A party at the Playboy Mansion

Posted on September 20, 2023 | 2 comments

Here’s a bit of history for you.  This story will appear in my book-in-progress, which focuses on the lawsuit filed by my co-counsel and me in Chicago in February 1970.  Our lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of the regressive Illinois abortion statute, and we won a 2-to-1 decision in our favor from a three-judge court on January 29, 1971.  The ruling, Doe v. Scott, 321 F.Supp. 1385 (N.D. Ill. 1971), can be read online.

When my granddaughters learned that I had once attended a party at the notorious Playboy Mansion in Chicago, they were astounded and wanted to know how and why it happened.  This is what I can tell them, and you:

On a chilly evening in late December 1969, the Chicago ACLU sponsored a fund-raiser, including a lavish party for donors at the Playboy Mansion on North State Parkway.  The event was promoted as a celebration of the Bill of Rights.  Hugh Hefner, publisher of Playboy magazine, was not surprisingly an avid supporter of those rights, which enabled him to keep publishing his often lurid magazine largely without restrictions.  At that time, Hefner was living in his opulent Chicago mansion, and he opened its doors to partygoers that December night.

My co-counsel, Sybille Fritzsche, was an ACLU lawyer and my colleague in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Illinois abortion statute. As a lawyer with the Appellate and Test Case Division of the Chicago Legal Aid Bureau, I was representing low-income and minority women.

Sybille somehow wangled a non-donor invitation to the event for me.  I was delighted to be included, hoping to encounter some interesting people and get a good look inside the famed mansion.  I wore a glamorous new pantsuit in a beautiful indigo blue with rhinestone buttons, and I walked to the mansion from my nearby studio apartment. 

The atmosphere was raucous, featuring a large crowd of partygoers and extremely loud rock music.  I caught a glimpse of lavish furnishings and stunning artwork, but the crowds kept getting in the way.  I remember seeing celebrities like Peter Lawford acting inappropriately, and I also witnessed something a bit more startling.  I watched people (mostly young women) swimming in the nude in the mansion’s somewhat notorious pool. I descended to a lower level and sat facing the underwater window along one of the pool’s walls, allowing me and anyone else to watch the nude swimmers.

I soon ran into Sybille and her husband Hellmut, but we were barely able to communicate over the din. Sybille herself complained about the loud music that drowned out any conversation.  She was nearing the end of her fourth pregnancy.  (Her child was born the following February.)  But she didn’t let that stop her from having a great time at the party, where she undoubtedly recognized a lot of her colleagues and friends.

As for me, I chatted with some other partygoers, but I didn’t readily recognize any friends besides the Fritzsches, and the noise finally got to me.  So after roaming around the mansion a bit more, munching on food and imbibing liquid refreshment, I decided to walk home.  I lived only a few blocks away, and I distinctly recall running down those dark city blocks, attempting to avoid the many treacherous patches of ice on the sidewalk. 

I safely arrived at my studio apartment, certain that I would remember the event forever.  But, in truth, it was buried in the far corners of my mind until 2022, when it popped back into my consciousness while I was trying to recall any and all lawsuit-related events that took place from late 1969 through January 1973. 

I went on to wear my glamorous pantsuit on a host of other occasions. I later attempted to add it to my clothing collection from that era, a collection I donated to the Chicago History Museum just before I moved to San Francisco.  But the museum staff ultimately chose to reject it because the fragile fabric was too worn—proof of just how much wear I had given it.  It remains hanging in my closet as an artifact dating from that long-ago era–and a reminder of partying at Chicago’s Playboy Mansion in December 1969.

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Posted in 1960s, American history, Chicago, Chicago History Museum, clothes, clothing, Illinois, law, lawyers, legal assistance to the poor, U.S. federal courts

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Being short

Posted on May 30, 2023 | 3 comments

Being short

When I was in seventh grade, I was one of the tallest kids in my class.

The other kids kept growing.  I didn’t.

So, for most of my life, I’ve been viewed by others as “short.”  Not painfully short.  Just short.  And that’s been fine with me because I’ve always viewed myself as perfectly normal, confident in my own (short-sized) skin.  At the same time, I can’t deny my short stature, with all of its attendant pros and cons.                      

Another writer, Mara Altman, recently put forth her own ideas on being short. In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Altman declared that “there has never been a better time to be short.”

Why did she decide to take up this particular cause?  Altman tries to make being short seem to be somehow better by dredging up a list of positives as support for her claim.  Quoting famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who was himself 6’8” and once said that our culture’s “favoring the tall” is “one of the most blatant…prejudices in our society,” she attempts to knock down that prejudice.

As someone who’s about the same height as Altman, I like her list of benefits.  For example, I like her claim that short people live longer and have fewer incidences of cancer.  Great news, if true.  I’ve lived my life feeling pretty happy about being short, and anything that bolsters my general feeling of well-being is welcome.  But I question some of her sunny conclusions. 

First, Altman contends that being short benefits the environment.  She cites Thomas Samaras (she refers to him as the Godfather of Shrink Think), who has calculated that if Americans were just 10 percent shorter, we would save 87 million tons of food every year, as well as trillions of gallons of water and millions of tons of trash. But where are the calculations that support these conclusions? 

Altman also cites, Yuval Noah Harari, the author of “Sapiens,” who studied a population of early humans living on a small island.  When the island was cut off by rising sea levels, “Big people, who need a lot of food, died first,” Harari wrote.  But does this story of an isolated group of early humans really inform us in twenty-first-century America?  For a more recent and more apt example, why don’t we look at Holocaust survivors?  I haven’t researched this topic, but it seems to me that those who survived horrendous treatment in the Nazi concentration camps covered a wide range of body types.  Everyone in the camps was desperate for food, disease stalked the camps, and survival depended on a number of things in the survivors’ lives.  I have to question whether the “big people” died first.

Another bit of questionable evidence cited by Altman:  The findings of a Dutch researcher, Nancy Blaker, who has studied “social status” and concluded that short men (not clearly defined), “counter to prevailing attitudes,” may “compensate” for being short by “developing positive attributes.”  According to Blaker, short men aren’t necessarily “aggressive and mean” but “behave in smart strategic ways…that can also mean being prosocial.”  Huh?  Let’s be honest here.  I’ve known a great many short (as opposed to tall) men during my lifetime, and I would never presume to generalize about them.  Each man, like each woman, is an individual, subject to his gene pool and to a number of influences that began in their early childhoods.  Each man, short or tall or medium-height, is the result of whatever has made him the way he is.  Whoever said they were “aggressive and mean” in the first place?  Ludicrous.  All of them now behave “in smart strategic ways”?  Some, maybe, but all? 

I share Altman’s concern that some parents foolishly seek out expensive human growth treatment in an attempt to produce a child who’s bigger than nature intended.  A Philadelphia endocrinologist, Dr. Adda Grinberg, worries that parents think height is the key to success and belonging.  Grinberg disagrees with these parents.  “There are some short people who thrive and do phenomenally well and lead fantastic lives, and there are some tall people who are miserable.  It’s not the height that determines the outcome.”   Well said.  Truly caring parents should think twice before subjecting their children to an uncertain and possibly harmful treatment, hoping their kids will turn out taller.  Altman confesses that her parents, concerned that she would be short, subjected her to those “excruciating” treatments for three and a half years.  And those treatments apparently didn’t make much of a difference.  She still turned out to be “five-feet-even” short.

I’d love to believe Altman’s claims that short people live longer and have fewer incidences of cancer.  I sadly don’t find any citations of evidence for those claims.  I similarly like her focus on environmental benefits, but her support there is also sketchy.  If anyone can offer valid numbers to attach to these claims, I’m all ears.

By the way, I’d add one advantage Altman’s omitted:  Being a passenger on an airplane.  No matter where I sit on a plane, I always have plenty of legroom because my legs simply don’t require a lot of room.  Taller passengers often look resentful.

But things may not the same on other forms of transit.  When I would take a commuter train from home to downtown Chicago, I’d usually seek out the window seat on a two-seater bench. Time after time, a large overweight man would squeeze into my bench, leaving me little space to enjoy my chosen spot.  Whenever I later told my darling husband about it, he wisely responded, “Of course! Those guys want to sit next to you because you’re so small.”  He explained the obvious:  These men were exploiting my small size by occupying the lion’s share of my bench.

So, being a short person hasn’t always been totally positive.  I have a perennial problem reaching high shelves and racks in stores.  Since the pandemic has cut my time in stores to a minimum, that problem has abated.  But I still have kitchen cabinets and closets with high shelves requiring a stool to reach items perched there.  But seriously, are those enormous obstacles to happiness?  I don’t think so.

Overall, being short hasn’t been a big problem for me. As a child, I always felt perfectly normal.  Both of my parents and my sister were also short, and I was never made to think that it was better to be tall. I’ve rarely felt excluded, because of my height, from any activity or pursuit I chose to follow, including attending law school at a time when women were generally discouraged from doing so.  And I had a whole universe of men, from the shortest to the tallest, who were OK with dating me, while taller women may have attracted a somewhat smaller cohort.

Still, I’m not sorry that my delightful daughters have turned out to be about five or six inches taller than I am, reaching a height somewhere between mine and that of their much taller father. They light up my life in every way.  But to be specific, they’re happy to grab items for me from those pesky high shelves. 

I’m OK with being short, and I don’t feel a need to defend it.  Nature intends us to be short or tall or in-between.  Why should I pick a fight with Mother Nature?

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Posted in cancer, Chicago, environment, family, happiness, long life, longevity, parents

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Marlon, Tony, and Cyd

Posted on October 26, 2022 | 5 comments

Thanks to the cable TV channel Turner Classic Movies (TCM), I frequently watch a wide range of movies produced from the late ‘30s to those in the 21st century.

Some of my favorites are movies from the 1950s.  One highlight is the 1955 film Summertime, featuring Katharine Hepburn as a single woman who finds love while touring Venice on her own. Shot on location in Venice, it’s not your typical romantic movie, surpassing that genre with Hepburn’s brilliant performance and its glorious setting.

Among many other films from the ‘50s, I recently came across the 1955 Hollywood version of the 1950 Broadway blockbuster musical Guys and Dolls.  I’d seen it before but not for decades, and the TCM introduction by host Ben Mankiewicz was intriguing.  He noted that the film’s director, Joe Mankiewicz (Ben’s uncle), induced Marlon Brando to take the role of the leading man (Sky Masterson) despite Brando’s reluctance to assume a role in a musical. 

Joe reportedly told Marlon that he’d never directed a musical before, but, hey, they’d worked well together one year earlier when Joe directed the film version of Julius Caesar, and neither of them had ever done Shakespeare in a film before. As we know, Julius Caesar was a success, and Joe convinced Marlon that they’d also succeed together in a musical.

Although I enthusiastically agree that they both performed at the top of their game in Julius Caesar, their later collaboration in a musical was less than totally successful.

Filled with catchy tunes composed by the great Frank Loesser, the movie is exuberant, probably as far as a movie musical can go.  But one enormous weakness is Marlon’s lack of vocal ability.  His part requires that he sing a host of major songs, but his voice just isn’t up to them.

(By the way, Frank Sinatra was reportedly angling for this role and not happy about being given the secondary part of Nathan Detroit.)

One of the most obvious examples of Marlon’s poor vocal ability is his rendition of “Luck Be a Lady,” a show-stopping musical number on Broadway. 

When I watched Marlon’s pitiful attempt to master it, I was flooded with memories of first hearing this song performed—live—by singer Tony Martin at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

I was a kid when my family and I arrived in Las Vegas en route from Chicago to Los Angeles.  We’d left our life in Chicago behind, hoping to find a new life for all of us in LA.  Our move was prompted by my father’s serious illness, which we optimistically believed was cured, and his hope to establish a new life for our family in sunny LA.

I was delighted by our departure.  I knew I’d miss my friends in Chicago, who memorably gave me a surprise farewell party featuring a cake emblazoned with “California, Here Comes Sue” (my preferred nickname at the time).  But I was excited about forging a new life on the West Coast, where I fervently hoped that Daddy would be healthy and able to forge a new career.  Sadly, that wasn’t to be.  (I plan to write about that period in my life another time.)

Many of you may be wondering, “Who was Tony Martin?”

Although Tony Martin has faded into our cultural background today, he was a prominent American singer and film actor during most of the 20th century.  Born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland, Tony began his musical career with a local orchestra until he left for Hollywood in the mid-‘30s.  He appeared on radio programs like Burns & Allen, then moved on to films, where he starred in a number of musicals and received equal billing with the Marx Brothers in their final film, The Big Store.  After serving during WWII, he came back to the U.S., recorded memorable songs for Mercury and RCA records (including some million-sellers), and returned to Hollywood to star in film musicals in the ‘40s and ‘50s.  He also began performing in Las Vegas and other venues and continued to perform live till he was over 90.  (The NY Times reported that he performed at Feinstein’s on Park Avenue in NYC at the age of 95.)

Before dying at 98 in 2012, Tony was truly a fixture in Hollywood films, recorded music, TV appearances, and as a headliner in live concert performances for seven decades.  In the public mind, he’s been eclipsed by another Tony—Tony Bennett–who became successful during the ‘50s recording hits like “Because of You” and “Rags to Riches.”  His rendition of 1962’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” became his signature song and made him a hero in San Francisco (although it was Tony Martin who was actually born in SF).  Tony Bennett, perpetuating his role as a celebrated singer of pop standards, jazz, and show tunes, has become something of a cultural touchstone.  Despite his recent battle with Alzheimer’s, his popularity endures.  I can’t deny that his prominent place in the American musical landscape has lasted far longer than Tony Martin’s.

Back to my story…. 

Our family was staying at an inexpensive motel on the Las Vegas Strip, but Daddy had grand plans for us.  He succeeded in getting us front-row tickets for Tony Martin’s memorable performance at the Flamingo, a luxury hotel on the Strip.

The Flamingo Hotel itself is noteworthy.  As the 1991 film “Bugsy” (starring Warren Beatty as Bugsy Siegel) and, more recently, the 2021 film “Lansky” (featuring Harvey Keitel as Meyer Lansky) make clear, Ben “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky were major figures in organized crime who funded the construction of the Flamingo Hotel in the late forties.  It was finally completed in 1947 around the time Bugsy was shot to death by his fellow mobsters, who believed him guilty of skimming money. 

I knew nothing of this history until many years later.  When I was a kid, all I knew was that I got to see and hear Tony Martin live at the Flamingo.  I absolutely reveled in being part of the audience that night, watching Tony perform.

When Tony sang “Luck Be a Lady,” he lighted up the stage, and the audience responded enthusiastically. I recall being completely enthralled. 

Marlon’s performance in Guys and Dolls wasn’t in the same league.

At the same time that Tony was executing this song far better than Marlon ever could, Tony’s wife, dancer Cyd Charisse, was making her own mark in Hollywood.  Tony and Cyd married in 1948, and their six-decade marriage ended only with Cyd’s death in 2008. 

Cyd was an astounding dancer in a raft of Hollywood films, paired with both Gene Kelly (in Brigadoon, for one) and Fred Astaire.  Her dance number with Astaire in The Band Wagon (to the song “Dancing in the Dark”) has been immortalized in 1994’s That’s Entertainment III.  And if you watch 1957’s Silk Stockings (a musical version of Garbo’s Ninotchka), your eyes are riveted on her fantastic dancing, which outdoes Astaire’s in every way.  (By the way, Cyd’s comments in her autobiography on dancing with Kelly and Astaire are fascinating.)

Was Cyd in the audience that night, sharing her husband’s fabulous performance with the rest of us?  I’ll never know.  But it’s exciting to imagine that she was there, applauding with gusto, just as we did, to pay tribute to Tony’s outstanding rendition of “Luck Be a Lady.”

It goes without saying that Marlon Brando was a brilliant actor, one of the most remarkable actors of his generation.  His performances in films like On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Godfather, and, for that matter, Julius Caesar, will remain in our cultural memory as long as films endure. 

But notably, after playing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, Marlon never attempted another singing role.  

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Posted in 1950s, American culture, Broadway musicals, California, Chicago, Daddy, family, family road trips, fathers, films, friends, Hollywood, Los Angeles, LA, memories, movie stars, movies, music, New York City, San Francisco, The New York Times

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PACIFIC BEACH: An unforgettable year (Part IV)

Posted on April 21, 2022 | 1 comment

My baby was due in early May.  One Friday close to my due date, I underwent a procedure in my doctor’s office called amniocentesis.  It involved plunging a needle into me to extract fluid proving that my fetus’s lungs were sufficiently mature.  It was painful, briefly, and there was a danger of piercing the amniotic sac, but skillful Dr. Blank carried it off with aplomb.

I felt fine when it was over, and Marv and I took off for a beautiful afternoon in Balboa Park.  We strolled through the park until we came across the Spanish Village Art Center, a collection of small buildings designed like an old village in Spain.  It was originally built in 1935 for the second California Pacific International Exposition, and a group of dedicated artists had turned it into a permanent art center. Artists have continued to preserve and enhance it. 

We happily encountered a watercolor artist, Frances Steffes, who was showing some of her paintings, including one of La Jolla Cove.  After chatting with her, we decided to buy this watercolor, which captured the beauty of a spectacular spot in La Jolla.  The painting now hangs in the home of the baby I gave birth to two days later.

Dr. Blank had warned us that amniocentesis might hasten the birth, so we took it easy on Saturday.

I woke up around 4 a.m. on Sunday. The process had begun.  As a high-risk primapara, I was worried that things might not go smoothly, so I needed to get to the hospital right away.

Marv and I phoned Dr. Blank and left for the hospital.  At that time, Scripps Memorial Hospital arose in the middle of a still largely undeveloped tract of land in La Jolla.  We were ushered into a room where my progress was monitored by a rather brusque nurse until Dr. Blank arrived.  Although I had increasingly painful contractions, I was told that my labor didn’t “progress” well.  Because of my high-risk status, Dr. B didn’t want labor to continue indefinitely, and at noon he decided to deliver my baby by C-section.

Now we began to wait for an operating room.  I was in agony, wondering exactly what was causing the hold-up.  We were finally told that only one operating room was available on Sundays (that was somewhat surprising), and another operation was in progress.  A male baby had a “bleeding circumcision,” and we had to wait for it to be surgically repaired before I could be moved to the operating room.  The surgeon who had caused the flawed circumcision must have been desperate to repair it to secure his professional reputation. 

All this time, I was having intense labor pains, along with accompanying worries about my high-risk status, and the waiting seemed interminable.  (I could comment here about gender-bias, but I won’t.)

Finally, I was moved to the operating room. An anesthesiologist gave me a spinal injection that killed my pain, and he and I chatted while Dr. B deftly performed my C-section.  When Dr. B announced, at last, “You have a beautiful baby girl!” I burst into tears, deliriously happy tears running down my face.

As soon as I was moved to a room, Marv immediately rushed to my bedside (fathers weren’t allowed in operating rooms), joyfully telling me, “She’s the prettiest baby in the nursery!”  By this time, Marv and I had decided on a name in memory of his late mother.  I’ll call her Felicia. 

We were extremely relieved to learn that Felicia had no signs of diabetes (or any other ailment), and my own gestational diabetes had vanished as soon as she was born.  It reappeared only briefly during my next pregnancy and then once again disappeared.  I’ve been lucky to have been spared this awful disease.  So far, at least.

Mom arrived from Chicago to join our newly-created three-member family when we left the hospital.  Her cheerful stay was brief but helpful.  After she left, Marv and began to focus on our new life.  Tammy and Norm volunteered to be our first babysitters, and we took them up on it and left for a quick bite at Bully’s.

Breastfeeding, a/k/a nursing, was a challenge.  At the time, breastfeeding wasn’t universally adopted by new mothers.  But I was determined to try.  I constantly returned to another well-thumbed paperback by an author who strongly endorsed it.  Just as she warned, it was painful at first, but I persevered, and it was worth it.  I loved holding Felicia in my arms, nurturing her with milk produced by my own body.  I still think that breastfeeding is an astounding experience that every mother should at least attempt, and I was delighted that both of my daughters followed my lead and breastfed their babies.

At home with my baby, I was able to watch the televised impeachment hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee, which began on May 9th.  By June, Woodward and Bernstein had published All the President’s Men, its astounding revelations creating a firestorm.  Tricky Dick was clearly in big trouble.

Going for long walks with our baby smiling at us from her carriage, Marv and I began to look at houses. We weren’t certain that we had a future in La Jolla (he had only a one-year appointment as a visiting professor), but we thought we might as well look, right?  I remember seeing a house in La Jolla that listed for $40,000.  It was in a not-so-desirable part of town and probably wasn’t much of a house, but looking back even a few years later, I realized what a great investment any piece of property in La Jolla would have been. 

Unsure that we’d stay, we unfortunately couldn’t consider buying it.  We didn’t have a lot of spare cash, and we needed to save what we had for a future home, wherever that might be. 

Marv and I got adventurous, taking our baby to a restaurant for the first time.  Our choice was La Rancherita, a small Mexican place on La Jolla Boulevard.  Dinner there was a breeze.  Felicia slept through the whole thing.

We tried our luck again a few weeks later.  We headed for a terrific Italian restaurant in Pacific Beach.  But our luck had run out.  This visit was a near-nightmare. Although Felicia was a happy baby who almost never cried, here she cried the entire time.  The only positive thing that happened: A woman diner asked me her name, then told me she’d given the same name to her own daughter.  That made me feel a tiny bit better.

Aunt Sade and Uncle Sam reappeared, driving down from LA, and we ate at a splendid seafood restaurant in La Jolla called Anthony’s. While we ate, we all gazed at the entrancing Felicia.  I was delighted to see Sade and Sam again at our joyous reunion, and I looked forward to another one. 

Life was blissful.  Although we knew we might have to leave our magical life in La Jolla, the prospect was too awful to contemplate.  But one day Marv had to relate very bad news. 

We’d been hoping that his one-year appointment at UCSD would be extended.  But his mentor, an older professor who (as I recall) headed the math department (I’ll call him Jay), was leaving.  A native of the Netherlands, Jay had taught at American universities for decades.  But his second wife missed her home in Europe and was eager to return.  For whatever reasons, Jay accepted a position in Amsterdam. 

This was shocking news.  Jay had invited Marv to UCSD because he greatly admired Marv’s work as a mathematician and relished sharing ideas with him.  I think Jay would have made sure that Marv remained his colleague at UCSD.  But Jay was departing, and his influence no longer held much weight.   

So although Marv was at the top of his field (he’d already earned tenure at the University of Michigan), the rug was suddenly pulled out from under him when Jay announced he’d be departing for Europe. 

Marv began searching for another job in California.  But it was too late in the academic year to secure a new faculty position, and other attempts to find a meaningful position for someone of his academic stature didn’t pan out.

So together Marv and I bravely faced facts.  We’d have to leave our idyllic new life in La Jolla.  We knew that the math department at the University of Michigan would welcome Marv back with open arms, so it made sense to return to Ann Arbor for one more year. 

Our new baby was totally dependent on us, and it was imperative that the three of us stay together.  I sadly had to forgo the prospect of returning to my Legal Aid job in San Diego.  I knew that I would continue to pursue my own career, but I never for one second considered looking for a job that would separate me from my adored Marv or my beautiful new baby or both.

Together we would move back to Ann Arbor.

We began packing.   While we packed, we put Felicia, comfy in her baby chair, on the floor near us. We discovered that she liked to kick brown paper grocery bags, watching the empty bags move and listening to them make noise, so we placed bags where her tiny feet could reach them.  This effort kept her happy while we filled up cartons with our stuff.

As we packed, Tricky Dick Nixon faced his own grim future.  On July 24th, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to deliver tape recordings and other materials to the district court.  The walls were closing in on him.

Then, between July 27th and 30th, we learned of two other developments:  The House of Representatives issued Articles of Impeachment, and Nixon’s “smoking gun” tape was disclosed.

Around August 1st, Marv and I flew back to Ann Arbor (via Detroit) with our not-quite-three-month-old baby.

While we stayed at Ann Arbor’s Briarwood Hotel, looking for an apartment, we had one consolation for our move:  On August 8th, Nixon announced his resignation in a televised speech (he officially resigned and left the White House the next day).  Watching his humiliating speech on TV, Marv and I celebrated by ordering steak and champagne from hotel room service.

An even more significant and lifelong consolation:  Our baby.  Felicia sustained us through everything we dealt with during the next year in Ann Arbor.  Flooding my memory is the agony of pushing her baby carriage through daunting piles of snow and ice that winter.

This darling new person in our life sustained us until the following spring, when Marv accepted an excellent job offer from a university in Chicago.  Being in Chicago would be an exciting departure from Ann Arbor.  Soon we used our spare cash to buy a house in the leafy lakefront suburb of Wilmette. 

No, it wouldn’t be La Jolla.  It wouldn’t be Pacific Beach.  But our new home in Wilmette meant the beginning of a beautiful new life.

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Posted in breast-feeding, California, Chicago, daughters, diabetes, family, happiness, La Jolla, mathematicians, Pacific Beach, U.S. Supreme Court, UCSD

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Happy Valentine’s Day? Maybe

Posted on February 14, 2022 | 4 comments

 Much of the world celebrates today, February 14th, as Valentine’s Day.

Are you celebrating Valentine’s Day this year?  I’m wondering just who among us is.

If you’re one of the lucky ones who have a loving spouse or an ardent beau, you’re probably celebrating this year.

I was a member of that fortunate group during my loving marriage to my darling husband.  Our blissful marriage came to a halt only because a terrible disease ended my husband’s life.  I like to think that we’d still be celebrating our love today if he’d survived.

Since he died, I’ve had one or two romantic liaisons with others, but at this moment I’m in a different place.  Today my kids and grandkids are my primary givers and recipients of valentine cards and gifts, red and pink hearts splashed all over them.

Of course, today is a bonanza for some commercial enterprises.  Americans spent about $21 billion on Valentine’s Day in 2021, and experts predict that nearly $24 billion will be spent this year, making today the fifth largest spending event of the year (after the winter holidays and Mother’s Day).  Will inflation and supply-chain issues affect these totals?  Valentine’s Day is probably inflation-proof, and delightful gifts can always be tracked down.

Benefiting the most are florists (about $2.3 billion), purveyors of chocolates ($2.2 billion), jewelers ($6.2 billion), and sellers of other heart-emblazoned cards and gifts. 

Which raises another question.  Aside from elementary-school kids, required to bring a valentine for every other kid in class to avoid any Charlie-Brown-style left-out feelings, is anyone still buying valentine cards this year? 

I hope so.  I’d hate to see an end to the decades-long practice of sending sweet wishes to loved ones and friends on February 14th

While we’re still stuck in the middle of a pandemic, confronting scary international events, and facing ongoing political divisiveness, I find it heartening to recall happier, simpler times.

Today I’m thinking about an old friend and the valentines he gave me many years ago.

My friend (I’ll call him Alan R.) grew up with me on the Far North Side of Chicago.  We were in a pack of friends who attended the nearby elementary school.  This was back when all of us walked to school, walked home for lunch, and walked back to school again for the afternoon.

In 5th grade, I acquired a handsome “boyfriend.”  (Although we thought of each other as “boyfriend” and “girlfriend,” those terms simply meant that we had some sort of pre-teen crush on each other.)  My best friend Helene had a major crush on my boyfriend, but I was the lucky girl for whom he made a misshapen plastic pin when he went away to camp that summer.

By the fall, Alan R. had replaced him.

Alan was never one of the best-looking boys in our class.  He was tall for his age and somewhat awkward, and he tended to be rather hefty.  But he had a pleasant face and a pleasant way about him, and he became my 6th grade “boyfriend.”

In October that year, he invited a whole bunch of us to a Halloween party at his house.  Helene and I decided to don similar outfits—black t-shirts and skinny black skirts.  For some reason, we were trying to look like French “apache dancers.”  I wasn’t really sure what that term even meant, but I suspect that Helene’s savvy mother inspired us to choose that costume.  However it came about, we knew we looked terrific in our very cool garb.  We may have even added a beret to top it off.

Alan played the gracious host, and when the party wound down, he led us outside, and all of us paraded through the neighborhood, knocking on doors and yelling “trick or treat.”  It was a truly memorable Halloween, probably the most memorable Halloween of my childhood.

I don’t have a clear recollection of the next few months.  The days must have been filled with other parties, school events, and happy family outings.  But I definitely have a vivid memory of Valentine’s Day the following February.

When my classmates and I exchanged valentines, I discovered that Alan had given me two.  Not one.  Two.  And they weren’t the ordinary valentines you gave your friends.  These were store-bought pricier versions.  One was sentimental, flowery, and very sweet.  The other one was funny and made me laugh.

What exactly inspired Alan to show his affection for me that way?  We were fond of each other, but I don’t remember giving him a special valentine.

Looking back, I wonder about his decision to give me those two valentines.  Did he choose them by himself?  Did he have enough money saved from his 6th-grade-level allowance to pay for them?

As a mother, I can’t help wondering about the role his mother may have played.  Did she accompany him to the card store on Devon Avenue, the one where we all bought our valentines?  (A long-gone kind of neighborhood store most of us patronized back then.)  Was his mother standing next to him when he bought his valentines, offering her advice?  If she was, what did she think of this extravagance on his part?

I like to think that Alan came up with the idea and executed it all by himself.  He saved his money and brought it to the store with the firm intention to buy a valentine for me.  Then, when he saw the colorful display of cards in front of him, he couldn’t decide whether to show his affection with a flowery card or to try to make me laugh with a funny one.

So he bought one of each, and, head held high, he gave both of them to me. 

I hope I exhibited a response that pleased him.  I can’t remember exactly what I did.  But I know that his delightful gesture has stayed with me ever since.

Sadly, those valentines disappeared when my mother scoured our home one day and tossed everything she considered inconsequential.  But they weren’t inconsequential to me.  I still remember the thrill of receiving not one but two valentines from my caring beau.

Everything changed in 7th grade.  A new school, new boyfriends, and new issues at home when my father’s health grew worrisome.  As always, life moved on.

Alan R. died a few years ago, and I wrote this story about him then.  He and I had drifted apart long before he died, but his fondness for me during 6th grade never faded from my memory.

Did Alan’s flattering attention give me the confidence to deal with some of the rocky times that lay ahead?  Teenage years can be tough.  Mine often were.  But his two-valentine tribute stayed with me forever.

Thanks, dear Alan, for being a warm and caring young person, even at the age of 12.  Although our lives went on to have their rough patches, the valentines you gave me back in 6th grade have never been forgotten.

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Posted in 1950s, American culture, apache dancers, caring, Chicago, fathers, friends, lifelong friends, Halloween, holidays, love, memories, mothers, teenage years, Valentine's Day, valentines

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A Remarkable Friend

Posted on January 21, 2022 | 2 comments

This is a brief tribute to a remarkable friend, Karen Ferguson, who died last month.  You can read more about her life in the following obits:

New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/30/business/retirement/karen-ferguson-dead.html
Washington Post  https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2021/12/29/pension-rights-karen-ferguson-dies/

Why was Karen remarkable? As the Times noted, she was “a Nader Raider, one of a legion of young public-interest lawyers who flocked to Washington” in the 1970s to work for Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who was at that time a heroic figure on the American political scene.  She chose to devote herself to working on pension law, an “unglamorous-sounding subject” that was actually full of human drama, where she was able to champion workers’ rights and effect enormous changes to benefit their future.

I met Karen and became her lifelong friend when we were both students at Harvard Law School in the 1960s.  I had just moved into Wyeth Hall, the women’s dorm, during my first year, and the delightful Karen Willner was in her third year.  Karen’s warmth immediately enveloped me, a lowly 1L. Happily for me, we stayed in touch after she graduated.

While I was finishing my three years at HLS, Karen married John Ferguson, who decided to attend the University of Chicago Law School, and together they headed for Chicago.  Karen wrote to tell me that she’d begun working at a downtown Chicago law firm, where she was the first and only woman lawyer. 

During my third year of law school, I actually interviewed with that firm.  Disillusioned with the D.C. of Richard Nixon (my original destination), I was thinking about returning to Chicago, my home town.  Although I hoped to get a clerkship with a federal judge, I also interviewed with several Chicago law firms.  After chatting for a while, the recruiter for Karen’s firm told me outright, “We just hired our first woman, and we’re waiting to see how she works out before we hire another one.”  (This interview took place after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the recruiter was violating federal law when he said that.)  I’ve told this story many times, to the amazement of most listeners, and I like to add that I knew who that “first woman” was:  Karen.

When I returned to Chicago, I began working for U.S. District Judge Julius J. Hoffman [please see “Hangin’ with Judge Hoffman,” a ten-post series beginning at https://susanjustwrites.com/2020/11/13/hangin-with-judge-hoffman/].  With both of us living and working in Chicago, Karen and I enthusiastically resumed our friendship.  Because John was busy with his law school studies, Karen and I saw each other many times in downtown Chicago.  And one memorable evening, Karen, John, and I went together to see “The Yellow Submarine” at a downtown movie theater. 

I was sad when Karen and John departed for D.C. after he finished law school (and began his career as an NLRB attorney).  But their departure led to Karen’s groundbreaking new chapter in her life as a lawyer:  her launch into helping people by reforming pension law, with fairness as her first priority. 

We managed to stay in close touch during the many years that followed.  My memory-bank is filled with happy memories of our long friendship, including wonderful times spent together in both D.C. and Chicago.

I loved following Karen’s career, deeply enmeshed in working on pension-reform legislation, including the Retirement Equity Act of 1984, signed into law by President Reagan, and the Butch Lewis Act, signed into law last year by President Biden.  I reviewed her excellent book, Pensions in Crisis (original title: The Pension Book).  My glowing reviews appeared in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin on January 25, 1996, and the Chicago Tribune on May 13, 1996 (“Pension Problems Come Alive, Along with Practical Guidance”).

Karen’s never-failing efforts to establish a secure and adequate retirement system, on top of expanded Social Security, are still under discussion on Capitol Hill. 

I also loved learning about the wonderful family she and John created, including her son, Andrew Ferguson, a lawyer, writer, and law professor at American University, and his wife and children.  My review and discussion of Andrew’s important book, Why Jury Duty Matters, appeared on this blog in April 2013. [Please see https://susanjustwrites.com/2013/04/03/does-jury-duty-matter/%5D

One more thing:  When I wrote my first novel, A Quicker Blood (published in 2009), I named my protagonist, a young woman lawyer, “Karen.”  I later brought her back as the protagonist in my third novel, Red Diana (published in 2018).  Was I thinking of my friend Karen when I chose that name?  I was. And all of the current nonsense focused on the name “Karen” infuriates me.  Although there may be a few women with that name who have acted inappropriately toward others, it’s totally unwarranted to pigeonhole all Karens that way.  Just think of Karen Ferguson and all that she’s done to make the lives of hard-working Americans more secure.  That’s in addition to her being a delightful human being, beloved by everyone who knew her.

In short, I was supremely lucky to know Karen Ferguson and to call her my friend for over five decades.  I’ve lost—indeed, we’ve all lost–one of the very best people on Planet Earth.

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Posted in 1960s, 1970s,, pensions, pension law, fairness, workers' rights, women lawyers, A Quicker Blood novel, Chicago, Harvard, law, law school, lawyers, memories, Nixon administration, novels, Red Diana novel, Ronald Reagan, Washington DC

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A Christmas story? Not really

Posted on December 21, 2021 | 2 comments

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.”

Is this about the supply-chain issues hindering the search for Christmas presents this year?

No.  It’s not.

What is it about?  Well, some of you may recognize the “Christmas presents” quote as the famous first sentence in a famous book.  “Christmas won’t be Christmas…” is the memorable first sentence in the enduring classic, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

The sentence is spoken by Jo, the most prominent of the book’s “little women” and Alcott’s alter ego, a strong young woman who’s determined to create a meaningful life for herself.  Jo, her three sisters, and their mother make up a New England family confronting the Civil War and its impact on their lives, while the girls’ father is a doctor treating Union soldiers somewhere far from home.  Short of funds, the family faces a Christmas with no presents.

This extraordinary book has long been the favorite of generations of readers.  In my case, it was one of only two books that, as a young girl, I read more than once.  I was a voracious reader and usually moved on quickly from one book to another.  Little Women was an exception.  (The other was Black Beauty.)  I reread Little Women because it was so beautifully written and so relatable to me as a young girl who, like Jo, wanted to create a meaningful life for myself.

Little Women has influenced a number of filmmakers, most recently Greta Gerwig, whose 2019 version offered a new take on it.  The “Christmas presents” line is buried nearly halfway through Gerwig’s film.  In every other film and dramatization I’ve seen, Jo speaks that line at the very beginning of the story, just as Alcott wrote it. 

Now I’ll explain how the “Christmas presents” line in Little Women relates to my own life.  Not as a reader or filmgoer, but as a preteen taking classes at the long-gone and now legendary Harand Studios in downtown Chicago.

I’m not sure how I first learned about the Harand Studios (officially called the Harand Studios of the Theatre Arts), but once I did, I promptly asked my parents to let me enroll there. 

I was eleven that fall, turning twelve the following spring, and my father had undergone surgery for colon cancer during the summer.  Happily, he’d recovered and returned to work as a pharmacist at a drug store at Sheridan Road and Lawrence Avenue, about three miles from our apartment on the Far North Side.  He didn’t love this job, but it was a source of needed income for our family of four.  My mother helped, working part-time elsewhere, and her earnings added to our coffers.

I knew it would be something of an extravagance for me to enroll at the Harand Studios (hereafter “Harand”).  Although my mother loved and cared for me, I don’t think she was terribly eager to pay for my lessons at Harand.  But Daddy was a softie, enamored with his two red-haired daughters, and he often indulged me when Mom didn’t.

And so I turned up at Harand one Saturday morning, excited to begin this new chapter in my young life.  Daddy drove me the twelve miles from our apartment to the studio, located on the second floor of a corner building on North Michigan Avenue, not far from the Allerton Hotel.  Michigan Avenue was still a quiet boulevard filled with low-rise, often charming and unique buildings, like the Michigan Square Building encompassing the exquisite Diana Court with its sculpture by the noted Swedish sculptor Carl Milles. 

Riding downtown with Daddy was a special treat.  During that ride, I had him all to myself, and I didn’t have to share him with my older sister.  After he dropped me off, he drove back north about nine miles to the drugstore where he worked, dispensing medicine and advice to customers for the rest of the day.

That first morning, I climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor, arriving at the studio not sure what to expect.  It turned out to be a magical place, filled with rooms that focused on three areas:  drama, music, and dance. 

The studio was the brainchild of two sisters, Sulie and Pearl Harand, who came up with the idea of a children’s arts studio in Chicago.  Sulie had studied opera, at one point coached by Kurt Herbert Adler, who later became the artistic director of the San Francisco Opera.  She won contests in Chicago and played clubs across the Midwest, performing tributes to Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and others.  Turning to musical theatre, she created one-woman shows, traveling throughout the country to perform in them.  And while she continued performing, she and her sister Pearl opened the Harand Studios.  

Pearl, a former member of the Chicago Repertory Theatre, primarily taught drama while Sulie primarily taught voice.

For me, the drama lessons at Harand were the most memorable.  Maybe because my love for drama had begun early.  As a small child, I took the part of Jerry, the animated mouse who’d appeared in a 1945 MGM musical, “Anchors Aweigh,” starring Gene Kelly.  Kelly danced and sang with the animated mouse in “The King Who Wouldn’t Sing or Dance,” inserted in the film as a charming story Kelly tells a group of kids. 

I must have been the very young student of a drama and music teacher who enlisted me to perform Jerry’s role in a recital.  I have only dim memories of this event, but I distinctly remember my own musical number and reveling in the applause as my older partner (playing Kelly’s role) and I took a bow.

My next dramatic role came along when I graduated from kindergarten.  My teacher chose me to play the starring role in our class’s performance of “Sleeping Beauty.”  (Prince Charming was played by my classmate Richard Just.  I wonder where he is now.)  Once again, I loved the audience reaction to my Sleeping Beauty, garbed in a wedding-party dress my cousin Anna hand-sewed for me. (Anna, my mother, and I had chosen the pale blue organza fabric at the long-departed fabric department at Marshall Field’s on State Street.)  But I had to pretend to fall asleep on the hard wooden floor of the auditorium stage, and I recall being mad that I couldn’t lie on a soft sofa instead.  A prima donna at age 6!

I later appeared on that same stage in other productions (we called them “assemblies”).  The most unforgettable took place one February around the time of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. I remember reading a poignant poem about Lincoln as well as portraying someone in his southern Illinois town.

Now, here I was, at age 11, immersed in dramatic pursuits at Harand.  And here was where the “Christmas presents” quote became a lifelong memory.   An abiding memory because Pearl Harand chose me to play Jo in the opening scene from Little Women, and I recited that line in many, many repetitions of that scene. 

At Harand, I also participated with enthusiasm in our music and dancing classes.  Music was usually supervised by Sulie Harand, along with Elaine F, a young and immensely talented pianist and singer.  Elaine was only 15 when she was hired to play at Harand on Saturday mornings and after school.  I vividly remember her piano artistry and how she taught our class some of the original songs she’d written.  (I can still sing much of “My First Big Dance.”)  I was lucky to forge lifelong friendships with both Elaine and her younger sister Natalie, another student at Harand.  To this day, Natalie, a steadfast friend, remembers that she “loved our Saturday mornings there!”

I enjoyed dance lessons as well.  Although my dance memories are pretty foggy, I do remember that we danced in a room with a mirrored wall and a ballet barre.

My best friend, Helene, who lived next door (and remains a friend), got wind of Harand and wanted to get in on the action.  She also recalls attending classes, taking buses to get there, but dropped out after a short time because she was “not talented!”  She and another friend, Renee, were “probably the worst ones” there.

But I was ecstatic about my Saturday mornings at Harand and kept going as long as I could.  When classes ended each week, I would emerge onto Michigan Avenue, sometimes stopping for a warm cookie at the small bakery on the first floor.  I’d catch a bus that would take me to my father’s drugstore, and my Saturday afternoons thus became memorable, too.

The drugstore had an old-fashioned marble-topped lunch counter, where Daddy would make sure I ate a good lunch, sometimes accompanied by a sugary beverage like a cherry “phosphate.”  I’d eat my lunch seated on a stool I could spin to my heart’s content.  Some of you may remember lunch counters like that one. 

They became famous a few years later when civil rights activists in the South protested segregationist policies, beginning in 1960 with a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.  The sit-in movement spread throughout the South, and places like Woolworth’s were ultimately forced to change their policies.

While I waited to go home with Daddy, I would carefully look over the drugstore’s merchandise.  I especially relished spinning the racks of paperback books and deciding which ones to show to Daddy.  Together we chose plays by Shakespeare and other classics, usually priced at the exorbitant sum of 25 cents.  I treasured our choices and saved them for years, until their cheap construction finally led to their literally falling apart.

At the end of Daddy’s workday, we’d climb back into our car, a 1948 Chevy, formerly a boring postwar gray and now a bright emerald green. (Daddy had hired someone to do the paint job.)  Together we’d drive home for dinner with my mother and sister. 

I never went much further with my dramatic pursuits.  That’s a story for another day.  But the “Christmas presents” line from Little Women has stayed with me, decade after decade.

Daddy died about a year after I began those classes at Harand.  The enormity of his loss changed my life and left a huge hole that remains today.

Those glorious Saturdays we spent together during the year before he died? They are enduring and powerful memories in my memory-bank, and they will remain there forever.

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Posted in American culture, American literature, cars, Chicago, children, Daddy, dance, dancing, daughters, dramatic lessons, dramatic pursuits, Harand Studios of the Theatre Arts,, family, fathers, films, friends, lifelong friends, literature, memories, Mom, movies, pharmacist, reading, reading fiction, remembering, taking buses, theater

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Dancing With Abandon on Chicago TV

Posted on October 28, 2021 | 6 comments

He was a good-looking bespectacled teenager with a full head of shiny brown hair.  I’ll call him Lowell M.  He helped out after school at Atlas Drugs, the corner drugstore near the small apartment where I lived with my widowed mother and older sister during my high school years.

I grew to hate that cramped apartment and would often plead with my mother to move somewhere else, but she never would.  I eventually escaped when I went off to live on the campus of the great university 300 miles away that enabled me to make my escape by giving me what’s now called a “free ride.”

Back to Lowell M.:  When I exited from the crowded Peterson Avenue bus I took home from high school every day, Lowell was usually working at the front counter of Atlas Drugs, just across Washtenaw Avenue from the bus stop’s drop-off corner.  While the drugstore’s owner-pharmacist was busy dispensing meds in the back of the store, Lowell would dispense the kind of clever pleasantries expected of us, two of the best and brightest our high school had to offer.  He was in the class ahead of mine, and we happily chatted about school and a whole host of other topics while I would select a package of Wrigley chewing gum or some blonde bobby pins (which didn’t really match my bright red hair) or whatever else had brought me into Atlas Drugs that day.

Lowell must have taken a liking to me because one afternoon, out of the blue, he asked me to accompany him to Chicago TV’s “Bandstand.”  This was shockingly, astoundingly, incredibly fantastic, and I could barely believe it.  Somehow Lowell had secured two tickets to Chicago’s version of “American Bandstand,” an after-school TV show broadcast on WGN-TV.  I haven’t been able to track down anything about that show on the internet, so I don’t think it stayed on the air for very long.  But I’ve stored some vivid memories of it in my nearly overflowing memory-bank.

It was the late-’50s, and my mother had switched from reading the Chicago Tribune to the Chicago Sun-Times after my father died and we left our temporary home in LA to return to Chicago.  (I’ll save the story of that move for another day.)  But my father had been a faithful reader of the Tribune before he died, and I can still see the Tribune’s front page, proclaiming that it was the “World’s Greatest Newspaper.”  Its far-right-wing publisher, tycoon Col. Robert R. McCormick, came up with that phrase, and its initials—WGN—became the call letters of the Tribune’s radio station and later its TV channel.

During the semester I’d spent in LA, I watched its local TV’s version of “American Bandstand” when I’d get home from school.  Hosting high school kids from all over LA to dance on TV, it featured the exciting new pop music that was emerging all over the country. 

Now I was about to attend a TV program just like that one.

Why did Lowell ask me to join him?  I was never really sure.  Maybe, just seeing me at the drug store that day, he asked me on a whim.  But no matter.  I accepted Lowell’s invitation with alacrity and rushed home to tell my sister and mother about my upcoming appearance on local TV.  Dancing to the latest pop music, no less.

My sister kindly (and somewhat uncharacteristically) offered to lend me her smashing new top, a black-and-cream-colored number with tiny horizontal stripes (much more flattering than wide ones).  She was always more interested in fashion trends than I was, and for once I was grateful that she was.

Somehow Lowell and I met up at the appropriate time and made our way downtown to the Tribune buildings located on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago.  We probably took the Peterson bus and transferred to the bus that ran along Michigan Avenue, but to be truthful, my memory’s a bit foggy on that score.  Eventually we entered the radio-TV broadcasting building, built ten years after the Tribune Tower itself, and we entered one of the 14 new studios added in 1950, probably one of the four designated for TV.

Ushered into the large studio, filled with other teenagers from all over “Chicagoland” (a term invented by the Tribune), we soon were dancing to the musical hits of the day.  My still-enduring favorites include “Earth Angel” by the Penguins, “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley, “Mr. Sandman” by the Chordettes, and “Sh-boom” by the Crew Cuts.

TV cameras whirled around the studio, capturing Lowell and me in our own version of “Saturday Night Fever,” two decades before that film appeared.

I recall having a fabulous time, dancing with abandon to my musical favorites, and I thought that Lowell did, too.  But I was disappointed when Lowell never asked me to do anything else with him, like go to a movie (a favored pastime of my friends and me).  So it’s possible that he may not have had the truly memorable time I had. 

Did I continue to see Lowell behind the counter of Atlas Drugs?  Maybe.  At least for a while.  But my guess is that he eventually moved on to other after-school jobs that were more in keeping with his burgeoning interest in the business world.

As he approached graduation a year before I did, Lowell began dating a friend of mine who was in his graduating class, and the two of them later married.  Lowell went on to college, earned an MBA, and built a successful business career. 

I went in a different direction.  Fascinated by the world of politics, I pursued two degrees in political science and landed finally in law school, aiming for the kind of career I wanted to follow as a lawyer and a writer.

But the memories of my exhilarating afternoon at Chicago’s version of “American Bandstand” have stayed firmly lodged in my memory-bank.  I will be forever grateful to Lowell M, who—perhaps on a whim—opened the door to those dazzling memories so many years ago.

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Posted in 1950s, 1950s televsion, American culture, Chicago, clothes, clothing, Daddy, family, fashion, fathers, friends, high school, law school, Los Angeles, LA, memories, Mom, mothers, pharmacist, politics, rock and roll music, teenage years, television

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